I’d like to introduce ourselves. We are Ukrainian journalists. We’re both cofounders of the organization called Public Interest Journalism Lab, which we now…We had a lot of experience in Ukrainian independent media. We used to work in the independent media.
One of the major projects we work on is documenting war crimes. We’re collecting testimonies of the survivors for history, for litigation. Almost five years ago, exactly five years ago, we cofounded this organization called Public Interest Journalism Lab.
It was the only idea. We thought that the idea of debunking fakes is not that efficient because it makes you live according to the discourse of the people who create these fakes.
One of our also good colleagues is Peter Pomerantsev, the British Ukrainian scholar researching propaganda. We were at the time thinking about what is happening in Ukraine, that the polarization in the country is used for exploiting vulnerabilities and creating division.
We created this organization whose aim was to investigate how we can create public interest journalism, which depolarizes. That’s when we learned about you.
I should say that when we founded the organization, which was pretty new and it was during a particular type of crisis we also have, I really read a lot about you. I went to listen to the conferences. I found it in Austin and elsewhere because, actually, it was an inspiration and a model.
That story about Uber, the other thing. So you have a very specific role in establishing our organizations five years ago. [laughs]
Thank you. Still, before that, I think not as part of introduction, but I really want to say it. Since then, I really wanted that it would be an opportunity to interview, to do this, to do that maybe. And then the full scale invasion hit, and we all were focused on the war crimes.
When I was also re-watching these interviews, it felt like pre war time. I felt like I returned to the peaceful time when we were dealing with…
Therefore, I probably just really want to explain because it’s very hard to understand the complicated concepts at that time. We just heard there is this Ministry of Digital Affairs in Taiwan. There are some cool people who are trying to find the solution on how to depolarize society by algorithm, by programming.
Just after telling that story about Uber, I understood what exactly the thinking is, and I’m giving a lot of examples about that to a lot of people. Maybe just let us start with that. That would be a very good introduction for our audience. What kind of things are you speaking about, the depolarization? Because I feel it’s very close to your heart.
It’s a service, basically. You know ProZorro. Right?
In Ukraine, we are very proud of our online governance for our system Diia which has 130 services. Very cozy and also beyond being very useful and handy for the people, it really prevents a lot of problems and troubles.
For instance, the paperless country helped us to avoid the refugee crisis in 2022 and internally displaced crisis because in 2014, we had it. The country and the state was more or less stopped in some places physically, because people cared not about real needs, but I lost some paper, without this paper. I couldn’t do that.
If, for instance, by 2022, we didn’t have this service, that would be really, really very bad, tough, great anxiety, crisis, and whatsoever. This platform is used on numerous things, logistics, and now about the military draft.
After listening to a lot of and looking at what makes Taiwanese approach different, what is ours is just clearly services for the people. It’s purely about services. Make them easy. They help to fight corruption for instance. Transparency helps to fight corruption, access to documents.
Everything is about the state providing the service, but there is no other, it’s a good idea, but there is no philosophy of participation. It’s a very different idea from the Minister of Digital Affairs.
Yeah. So it’s so-called participation.
Yeah. Right.
That’s why for me the question is, actually what is at heart? Because it’s all about digital technology. All is good for people. But what makes your approach you know, what is at heart of it?
Is it participation or technology, and how you enforce this principle to the people, to the government, that it’s not just user-friendly as we today say. We’re speaking about user-friendly services for the people, but it’s not about democracy too much.
How do you insert democracy in that? Why do you think it’s critical for you? Why is it such a priority issue for you? On an ideological level, why is it more of a priority than building a lot of good services?
Because you have kind of a particular tradition where there is no culture of…
We also have two sons in law. We have a son-in-law, if we have a son.
We are where we are today in the world when we see a bit of a backslash when community notes were popular, but now with everything which is happening in social media, actually let’s say, liberals and progressive are very much afraid of technology like, because you see that it can be an oligarchy as well.
It can be the rule of a couple autocrats, who are just very much enlightened by knowing algorithms and the way how to work, could be also very rich. We can speak about Elon Musk. We can speak about what’s going on in Facebook. What is your take on that?
Also on a philosophical level because people have now for just the last half year, of course we were living the context of the war against Ukraine, but wherever you go, in the media, anywhere, people are just freaking out because of AI. You know they’re afraid, afraid, afraid. And with what Elon is doing online, people are just really freaking out.
What is your take on actually what is going on? How can you promote something else? What is your argument? Aren’t you concerned as well that that would be singularity? Instead of plurality because it’s for them. It’s not singularity. It looks like that singularity is enforced today.
You laughed. It worked.
[laughter]
There was another kind of competition because what I understand, there is something in human nature to argue as well, especially online, as we said, that you made a competition for the people about what vaccine is better?
I would allow us to also share our experience because it was also pivotal. When we were setting up our organization, we were planning to work on human rights and how to reach out to the people on occupied territories. Exactly on that day is when we really decided to meet, the COVID pandemic was announced.
We started to speak about how you speak about the COVID. But by the way, not when vaccination started. Way ahead was about one of our cofounders Tetiana Peklun, who said, look. Sooner or later, vaccines would be invented. Sooner or later, they would be invented. It will be summer. We knew that there would be an anti-vaxx movement because it pre preexisted in Ukraine earlier.
Probably the Russians would invent their vaccine, because there was a discussion. Vaccines were not there. So we really, back then secured some funding for the research. It took us some time because vaccines were still not there.
It took kind of months as far as…
And we did the point and the research. What do people want to know and what are their concerns about vaccination? And then we figure out that really by the numbers, around seven percent people believe in conspiracies.
Yeah. They believe. They believe. These are obvious. But the absolute majority, we’re really having a lot of real concerns, if I have a pregnant wife, if I have a small kid, if my mother has three diseases and she’s 96.
The problem was that the quality media very good media including like youngster’s media, also we’re already starting little by little do some kind of debunking and later figure out during the social media, during the focus group that this kind of like humor approach in a way when you mock the people who are anti-vaxxers saying oh, there won’t be problems if you take vaccine.
People felt offended because they said I’m not crazy. I don’t believe that there would be problems if there were a vaccine.
But yeah. It’s not funny.
Yeah. So the point was that, actually, you really need, first of all, to answer the real questions to the real people. We’re not creative enough to think about, like how you make it in a humorous way or competition way. But the findings were quite clear. You really need to learn and most of the people are ready to agree on something. That’s every single one of our research…
I’m rather saying that by default, we figure out that every single one of our research, that people are more moderate. Then it gives…
How then you compete in this competition if you are a government, if you are a public interest journalist, public broadcaster? How do you, I mean, even enter this competition?
In most cases, it’s kind of a macro level. Something else, we hear in Taiwan. When I was also listening to quite a few new interviews of yours there was one which was very peculiar for me because the anchor of a very classical media station was very much pushing you on political issues.
Like, I know you are nonpartisan, but can you really express your opinion on China, on things, on that? Still what I wanted to say is that when we are coming here as Ukrainians, we speak to people in Taiwan and they are saying it’s a very polarized society today, there are issues happening, they are concerned about the Chinese influence.
First of all, it’s a country. There are existing parties. There are existing political views. Sometimes for others also, it’s tricky. Who are the agents? Who is a paid kind of troll, what is a campaign, and where is…
Who is a political opponent, and where is a genuine sentiment? How do you put maybe for yourself some red lines? What is for you is being nonpartisan navigating in this environment, but then also it’s I can say, I mean, in Ukrainian, there is a threat of China.
I know with every Taiwanese almost we speak, they all speak, they’re expecting or being afraid of the invasion and they’re concerned that there is disinformation, you speak so much about cyber attacks all the things.
For you, how do you define this? What is for you being nonpartisan? How did you navigate in the political environment? And were there red lines? How you define all the facts? Being a Taiwanese is like, it’s your country you built, you fought, you do, you live for it. You really understand that there are some partisan things. We don’t want to have a war. We don’t want to have an invasion.
